Over the weekend, Sen. Lisa Murkowski learned the hard way not to get between women and birth control. Back from Washington, D.C., for the start of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, the senator kept running into female voters who wrote in her name in the last election — moderate women who did not always vote Democrat or Republican. These women were coming unglued.
The reason: Murkowski’s support for a measure that would have allowed not just religious employers, but any employer, to opt out of providing birth control or other health insurance coverage required by the 2010 health-care law for moral reasons.
“I have never had a vote I’ve taken where I have felt that I let down more people that believed in me,” she said.
She’d meant to make a statement about religious freedom, she said, but voters read it as a vote against contraception coverage for women. The measure was so broad, it’s hard not to read it that way. I suspect Murkowski saw that, but for reasons she didn’t share with me, voted for it anyway.
But when I talked to Murkowski, her position had softened. She said she voted for the Blunt Amendment (proposed by Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt), to send a message that the health care law needed a stronger clause for religious conscience. It was supposed to be a vote for religious freedom, she said, but to female voters back home it looked like a vote against contraception. The language of the amendment was “overbroad,” she said.
“If you had it to do over again, having had the weekend that you had with women being upset about the vote, do you think you would have voted the same?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
She called the Blunt Amendment a “messaging amendment” that “both sides know is not going to pass.”
I asked if during her weekend in Anchorage, she’d thought at all about Rush Limbaugh, who recently said a lot of unsavory things about a Georgetown University student testifying for birth control coverage, including that she was expecting taxpayers to pay for her to have sex.
“I think women when they hear … mouthpieces like that say things like that they get concerned and they look to policymakers,” she said. “That’s where I feel like I have let these women down is that I have not helped to give these women the assurance they need that their health care rights are protected.”
I’m just going to give you the text of the Blunt Amendment again, because the truth is Murkowski didn’t protect anyone.
providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor,issuer, or other entity offering the plan;
“Overly broad” is an understatement. The amendment she vocally supported and voted for would allow any employer to assert any religious or moral objection to any provision of health insurance coverage.
The amendment she voted for would have gutted federal (and state law) guarantees people in her state have now, regarding mandated health insurance coverage. She took people in Alaska backward, to less health care security. There is absolutely nothing in that amendment that would have barred any employer from declining to cover a whole range of health care services to a whole range of people. When Blunt was questioned on this, his one and only “assurance” was that federal courts would sort out what was a religious or moral objection. That’s an admission that the amendment itself offered no protection, and, again, these are protections people have now, under current federal and state law.
Murkowski regrets her vote because she’s finding out it’s politically unpopular. Did she not read and understand the amendment? What happens the next time she wants to “send a message” and actually passes a law?
Scott
Well, Blunt and Murkowski wouldn’t be affected, so who cares? Just a bunch of dumb poor people and working folks and voters. Who needs them?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
And Murkowski was the reasonable R choice in that election. I recognize she ran as an incumbent write in, but the Joe Miller was frightening. McAdams, who had a god local record and ran a great campaign was unlikely to prevail in any event in AK. Still, she’s just a liar like they all are.
BenA
I’m glad it’s playing this way even in Alaska…
kdaug
God willing, we have a President who says “Fuck you”.
Culture of Truth
A message? God I am so sick of these cowardly pandering idiots. Go play in a sandbox and leave my government alone.
Southern Beale
Oh really? Because it failed by, what, TWO votes? That’s cutting it a little too close for comfort for a lot of us women, who nearly lost important insurance coverage of needed medication so you could get your “message” out.
How about next time you want to get a message across you PUT IT ON A FUCKING BILLBOARD.
Assholes.
c u n d gulag
Well, Senator, wake-up and smell the feces!
Your (former?) Party keeps taking dumps on people and the Constitution every day – and has for decades.
Glad you finally noticed.
To bad you’re not up for reelection for awhile!
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
It is some minor relief that at least one wingnut is afraid of their voters which is perfectly normal and natural in a democracy. Though Lisa is independent now, and not directly plugged into the winger mother ship.
The right wing echo chamber right now is reinforced titanium, and in DC it is triple thick from tertiary ODS. The rest of them are holding hard onto their rubber duckies as the republican ship lists from all the stupid taking it down. Maybe Limbaugh’s partial demise will bring some added sanity, but I’ll believe it when I see it. If they don’t change, at least some, or at least stop the purity tailspin, they are doomed at the box office for the near future.
...now I try to be amused
I find Murkowski’s vote doubly disappointing because, having beaten a Tea Party challenger in a write-in vote, she is in a unique position to say FU to the wingnuts. And it should be a pleasure to do it.
kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
The ridiculous Tea Party threw her under the bus, and the cowardly GOP allowed it to happen.
Independents and moderates saved her. So she goes back to DC and immediately screws them? She’s a Senator. They should insist she introduce a “messaging” amendment to rebut the messaging amendment she voted for and promoted. If she’s truly sorry, that shouldn’t be a problem.
SW
Here is the thing. Because of fee marketeers, we have a health care system in this country, unlike most other civilized countries where access to care is part of an employees compensation package.
That is historically how it evolved. Employer sponsored health insurance began as a means of attracting and retaining workers. It is part of your pay. Employers are giving this to you as a substitute for cash to get you to work for them.
What the Republicans and some misguided Democrats are saying is that employers can feel free to use any bogus ‘conscience’ excuse to fob off an inferior product on half of the population as part of their compensation. And legally get away with it by hiding behind the skirts of clerics.
Culture of Truth
A message?? God, I am so sick of these cowardly pandering idiots. Go play in a sandbox and leave my government alone.
capt
So this is in Alaska? Maybe there is more hope for the country than I had given credit. *fingers crossed*
The GOP should have never messed with women, I think they’ll regret it.
Ash Can
Shorter Lisa Murkowski: “Crap, they found me out.”
dmsilev
“If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” – Sam Goldwyn.
Gary
There are no more reasonable Republicans.
During the civil rights battles of the 1950s-60s someone described southern moderates as very southern and not very moderate. The same can be said about Republican moderates today.
They’re very Republican and not very moderate.
And yes, Olympia, I’m looking at you as well.
azlib
I guess contraception has replaced Social Security as the 3rd rail of American politics. I believe the Republicans have unleashed something they cannot put back in the bottle.
MikeJ
If you want to send a message call Western Union. And they’ll tell you fuck off because there’s no such thing as a telegram any more.
But if she wanted to send a message I’d say “mission accomplished.” The message is she can’t be trusted and women all over Alaska heard it loud and clear.
J
I’m waiting for mass conversion to Christian Science. Perhaps then the sponsors of this bill will see that it was ‘overly broad’ even by their lights, since they probably understood ‘moral’ to mean ‘having to do with sex’.
Villago Delenda Est
Religious freedom, my ass. The Blunt amendment is all about someone imposing their religious beliefs on others, specifically, their employees.
It’s the opposite of religious freedom. It’s religious oppression.
Fuck Blunt, and fuck Murkowski.
Rosalita
@Southern Beale:
This!
chopper
i’m still amazed at the fact that a bunch of federal employees with federal health coverage are looking to provide a single bureaucrat (the head of OPM, which administers FEHB) with the ability to determine what their health care coverage is, based solely on his fee-fees.
small government to the rescue!
...now I try to be amused
@chopper:
Government can’t get much smaller than one person making all the decisions, eh?
kay
@J:
I think employers absolutely could have (and some would have) declined to cover maternity care for unmarried women. It’s expensive. All they had to do was raise a “moral objection”.
I can hear it now :”I’m not paying for women who had sex”.
You really start to wonder if “pro-lifers” DISLIKE children. They’re incredibly cavalier and reckless with this legislation.
MikeJ
BTW, the President’s press conference is 1:15pm right coast time.
And something all fans of West Wing will hate, he’s at the Newseum tonight.
scav
And let us consider (and possibly thank) that ur-idiot Issa who, by getting sniffy and messagey and ??? (because what would logically explain the action) in the first place and would only allow holy mature men to testify before him. Put Fluke there, no Death Panel of XY photos that prodded the matter that much more into the limelight and provided a still fiercer spotlight on one Sandra Fluke (who just happens to be supremely cool under fire). Ahhhh, when things work like this . . What looks to be a strong hand of face cards turns out not to matter so much if they’re all microcephalics.
leinie
SB@6. Yes. This.
Everybody knew it would fail, so it was ok to pander? Fuck you, Lisa, and the rest of your sanctimonious little friends. I’m so sick of this shit, where they know it’s insane but count on the democrats to pull them off the ledge.
I can’t believe it’s 2012 and we have to have this conversation, again. I really do like my boss, but the part of my health insurance that his company pays for is part of my compensation, and my take home wages have been stagnant for about five years because any increase has had to go to the health insurance instead of to the money that gets deposited in my checking account. He doesn’t get to tell me how I spend my money, he doesn’t get to make the medical decisions for my doctor. And I’m talking about a health care plan that doesn’t cover abortion and doesn’t cover birth control EXCEPT for the coverage of oral contraception, which I’m thinking is tied to some legislation some where……
rikyrah
she thought folks were too dumb to know what it was about….she got a surprise when she went back home.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
I’m beginning to think that this outrage has legs. I was afraid everybody would have forgotten about it by November.
Maybe they will—but it might energize some female college students (and the rare male college student who likes sex) to jump all the hurdles that the Republicans have set up to prevent them from registering to vote. Then by November, maybe they will have forgotten about this specific outrage, but I’m sure there will be some new atrocity that will make them think: “Hey, I’m registered to vote!” I can think of several states where this could make a difference.
kay
@rikyrah:
I love how she’s clueless on who voted for her. The lunatics she’s pandering to voted for the corrupt Tea Party lawyer. The other guy. Was she paying attention to that election?
Linda Featheringill
Music to my ears.
I feel like listening to American Woman. Probably available on youtube.
ETA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkqfpkTTy2w
Brenn
@Culture of Truth:
They are playing in a sandbox. And they’re throwing sand at each other. Nothing more, nothing less.
Steve
@kay: In all honesty, I’d be surprised if anyone even offers such a policy. When you buy health insurance for your company, you have options, but it’s not exact a la carte pricing. It’s not like you can say “okay, I don’t want gall bladder surgery to be covered” and they will just quote you a lower price.
Also too, we’ve been talking here about an HHS mandate, but if you go down that road you’re getting into EEOC territory. Lots of employers want to avoid hiring women who may be getting pregnant in the near future, but you can’t discriminate on that basis.
Rick Taylor
Bah. I don’t believe she’s as clueless as she pretends. It wasn’t like this was some obscure amendment, the issues surrounding it were hotly and publicly debated leading up to the vote. She just didn’t want to vote against her Republican colleagues, and pretending she had no clue this was about anything but religious liberty was a way to do it. It didn’t work.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
It is depressing, as I listen to MSNBC, all the voter suppression efforts in states with GOP governance right now. 27 of them requiring photo id, or cancelling early voting, making it harder for students to vote, etc… etc…. It is nothing short of an assault on democrats voters and democracy itself. I want to think these efforts won’t make a big difference, but I have no idea if they will or won’t. And done for the
liereason there is a problem that doesn’t exist, voter fraud.Linda Featheringill
Re: American Woman:
Lenny Kravitz has a good cover but his accompanying video is very nice.
But perhaps not suitable for work.
kay
@Steve:
I think the conservative goal is a la carte, though. That’s why they want to “sell insurance across state lines” to get around state mandates on coverage, and race to the bottom. They’re running on telling people they’re “paying for” other folks health care coverage. It’s one of the huge selling points.
I went to a health care law forum last week, and one of the conservatives in the room was whining that he wants “high risk pools” for people that use a LOT of health care. His example was a juvenile diabetic. HE doesn’t have that problem. Why should he pay for it? That’s unfair.
I think this selfishness they’re promoting is going to come right back and bite them in the ass, because I haven’t noticed any difference between liberals and conservatives and general levels of health.
Punchy
Unfuckingreal. So now the Republican playbook is to waste time, money, and goodwill with completely bullshit bills?
And by the way, Lisa….it DID pass….the House. So fuck you and your “not going to pass” baloney.
scav
@kay: And how I do love the roots of pander, dear old Pandarus pushing his niece/cousin into the arms of various men, a Panderer now being a manager of prostitutes.
kindness
It’s all because Republicans are full of shit. Oh sure, they dress up and parade around as the party of liberty, the party of keeping government off our backs but that isn’t true. Republicans are the party of the government can tell you what you can and can’t do in your bedroom party. They are the party of keep the government from taxing the top 1% fairly party even if that means everyone else has to pay more.
Republican know this. Republicans lie when they say they don’t. Now if Republicans don’t know all these things will be albatroses, millstones around their necks come election, I don’t feel sorry for them.
MattF
I’m so pleased that the bullshit ‘religious liberty’ argument isn’t fooling anyone, except maybe in South Carolina. Alaska is not a southern state, after all, and Murkowski should have been aware of that.
paradox
I sure hope the Obama team huddled and came up with the ultimate knifing of Rush. So easy, so necessary.
Sorry to wander OT.
Rafer Janders
There’s that laser-like focus on jobs, jobs, jobs we’ve come to expect from the GOP.
danielx
Lisa Murkowski regrets her vote because she got caught. If that amendment had passed her press secretary would have sent out a release publicizing her vote so that wingnuts could see how dutifully she puts on Preparation H for lip gloss every morning.
Repeat: she’s sorry she got caught.
Southern Beale
BREAKING: Second radio station dumps Rush:
catclub
@kay: “They’re running on telling people they’re “paying for” other folks health care coverage”
As I reply to my wingnut friend’s email: “There is no US in USA.” He never responds.
The concept that we are all in this together is completely foreign. I blame the ‘personal savior’ religions, which are deeply wrong as far as Christian theology is concerned (i.e. the body of Christ on Earth is ALL of the Christians. Salvation is salvation of and for ALL, not a selected few.). But what do I know.
Swishalicious
As the guy who worked for McAdams (and got Cole to put up the obligatory McAdams bleg during 2010, my finest achievement) I can tell you that this is exactly what Lisa Murkowski does on every damned issue of importance to moderates and women: she toes the party line on everything that’s really meaningful, then gets mealy-mouthed and regretful in hindsight, ascribing her motives to some nebulous bullshit notion of fairness or not having understood the full implications, yada yada.
No wonder she failed the Alaska bar exam 5 times. A real intellectual powerhouse, that one.
The Ancient Randonneur
This “messaging” amendment is about to take Rush down and the GOP “moderates” are all getting ready to find out that the generally sound asleep public got the effing messaging. Message away GOP! We may be looking at the “message” that puts Nancy Pelosi back in the Speakership. (OK, I know I’m being overly optimistic, but hey, let a fella dream!)
Steve
@kay: You may be right about where this is headed. As far as I know, the most important thing that keeps the insurance companies from offering a la carte pricing is regulation. Every time you underwrite a new type of policy, you have to get everything cleared by the state regulators and it’s a pain, so they’d rather offer the same 2 or 3 polices to everyone.
Having said that, I think the insurers want to get rid of the regulation (i.e. “sell across state lines) for its own sake, not so much because they want the freedom to offer a la carte pricing. I can’t imagine how it would help their bottom line and it would be an administrative headache. Imagine how much more training you’d have to give your claims people when everyone’s policy is different, for example.
I can envision the big employers, those who barely offer health care worth mentioning in the first place, getting behind something like a la carte. For small businesses, the boss generally doesn’t want to sit there and redline the coverage options because he and his family are going to live with the same coverage he buys for the employees. You wouldn’t want to opt out of cancer coverage to save money and then find out you have cancer yourself. There are only a very few items that certain people can guarantee they won’t need – and guess what, they turn out to be things like birth control, maternity coverage, etc.
Warmongerer
I’ve noticed lots of right-wingers have started claiming that Target sells birth control for $9 a month but can’t find any source that doesn’t go back to CNSNews.
Did some checking – Target offers *two* kinds of birth control (Sprintec and Tri-Sprintec) for $9 a month without a prescription. That’s it.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@kay:
Fixed.
I realize that most non-core Democratic voters in AK didn’t have a lot of great choices but anybody thinking that Murkowski would fundamentally change her political stripes upon returning to DC was on crack. Her vote simply symbolized that she’s still a pretty conservative Repup.
Glad this came back to bite her in her sorry ass. Not that it’ll affect her reelection chances or how she’ll vote on this stuff in the future. As was said above, she’s contrite because she was called out on it by people who otherwise wouldn’t have voted for her.
MattF
OT, but I’m getting an ad that says “Support Sheriff Joe’s Efforts To Take Our Country”. Am I missing something here?
angler
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): well said
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
Queue up next wingnut outrage. what is Obama hiding, did Michelle say “let’s git Whitey” on it. Our national Big Lobotomy marches on.
MikeJ
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): I don’t suppose they considered the fact that the playhouse probably had rights to perform the play but not to videotape. Which means that a personal videotape for study of the performance would be ok, but you certainly couldn’t release it to other people.
Cris (without an H)
Good for the people of Alaska for telling her, to her face, that she did wrong by them. We all need to do this, whenever we can.
PeakVT
However, with Super TUESDAY arriving, the show picked up some additional advertising from the WINNING OUR FUTURE Super PAC, which supports NEWT GINGRICH.
Adelson’s money is already supporting one asshole. Why not two for the same price?
Mnemosyne
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
Somebody needs to tell those cheap bastards that they can buy the damn play on Amazon.com for $9.95. It’s not like it’s some top secret.
Southern Beale
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
That entire fake controversy has put me in irony overload.
You really can’t be a self-described “freedom loving patriot” while at the same time targeting people over what theater they’ve seen. This is definitely the last gasp of movement conservatism.
harlana
THANK YOU! this is not only about birth control coverage, it’s about allowing employers to deny coverage to its employees, for any reason, just because they assert that any treatment/procedure of their choice (let’s face it, this would quickly ratchet up to ANY AND ALL treatments/procedures) makes them feel icky, PERIOD.
it is brutal, nasty, heartless – and beyond that, i’m out of adjectives because my brain hurts
Nutella
@kay:
Almost as much as they dislike women.
Murkowski seems to think her job as senator is not to legislate, but to send messages. And to do it badly. Do any other incompetent public relations people in Alaska get $174K salary plus lavish benefits?
Southern Beale
@Mnemosyne:
Ha ha ha ha ha … I’m sure O’Keefe or one of their other crack “reporters” will figure that out sometime around 2015.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@MikeJ:
I don’t believe a word that website publishes, and otherwise will break out the rubber mallet to fix the BIG Headache this shit is giving me.
@Mnemosyne:
LOL, figures. But no doubt, that Amazon edition, they cut the part where Obama pledges allegiance to the Hammer and Sickle. Gotta be long form.
The Ancient Randonneur
@Warmongerer: They may be talking about that extra large bottle of aspirin.
ppcli
She’d meant to make a statement about religious freedom, she said, but voters read it as a vote against contraception coverage for women.
…because that’s what it was.
Mnemosyne
@Warmongerer:
I don’t think they can offer it without a prescription any more than they could offer, say, penicillin without a prescription. What they’re offering is a $9 generic store brand.
Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good price — for my generic, I would have to pay $42 per pack if I didn’t have a good co-pay. But they’re definitely not selling it “without a prescription.”
Steeplejack
@kay:
The stupid, it burns so hard. The whole concept of insurance is based on the idea of spreading the risk/liability around to dilute the costs.
kay
@Steve:
It’s a bigger stick than that, though. It’s not just “a pain”: states regulate what has to be covered, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they don’t want to be stuck with the bill for unreimbursed care.
All 50 states have (some) mandated coverage. Liberal states mandate more, and conservative states mandate less, but this Blunt amendment is federal legislation. It would override all that state law.
Insurance was regulated for a reason. There were huge abuses. Deregulating insurance, or punching huge holes in the scheme, isn’t a good idea, I don’t think.
gwangung
@MikeJ:
That’s exactly the case.
Warmongerer
@Mnemosyne:
You’re right, had a brain fart. I meant “without insurance”.
kay
@Steeplejack:
The guy from HHS was really patient. He said (correctly) that states have tried high risk pools, but they could never get the costs down, because they didn’t have the numbers. The part that was really interesting to me was that the (new) subsidized high risk pools under Obamacare (which are temporary, high risk will be rolled into the larger pool in 2014) are running really expensive as far as USE. They’re getting a lot of people who enter the high risk pool for something hugely expensive like an organ transplant. So, I don’t think high risk pools would “work” under any scheme. People put off care because they can’t pay for it.
Steve
@Mnemosyne: Setting aside the need to go somewhere and get a prescription, is there a reason this isn’t a viable $9/month option for the typical person without insurance?
ppcli
This whole “refuse on religious grounds to offer birth control” business is a much bigger deal in Alaska than it is even in other states. (This point is not *directly* connected with the health care coverage issue, but the whole “religious objections” issue is a coordinated package aimed at making birth control hard to obtain.) Distances in Alaska are great, and population is small. That means you are likely to have one pharmacy in your town if you are lucky. If that pharmacist refuses to fill birth control prescriptions you may have to drive an hour or more on bad roads to find another one. (Not a hypothetical – I grew up in a part of Canada that is demographically and geographically like Alaska. There was a small pharmacy in our small town. The next closest pharmacy was a half an hour away. The next closest after that was more than two hours away. If there was a prescription that would not be filled by either of the nearby pharmacists, it would be unavailable without a lost travel day a month.)
Mnemosyne
@Steve:
Because not all pills are created equal. People talk about “the Pill” as though there’s only one kind, but first you have to pick between multiphasic, monophasic, biphasic or triphasic, and then is it a low-dose, regular-dose, or high-dose pill, and then you have to look at whether or not that formula has any extras (Yasmin added in extra potassium (I think) but that ended up causing its own set of problems). Target is probably offering a monophasic and a triphasic, because those are the most common versions.
I use a biphasic generic version of Mircette, because all of the triphasic Pills sent me spiralling into a fairly serious depression. (I always thought it was a monophasic but apparently it’s biphasic.) So there’s a good chance that at least one of the two choices that Target offers would cause serious side effects for me.
ETA: There’s also the “mini Pill,” which is progestin-only and is used by women who are breastfeeding or who can’t have extra estrogen for some reason. Breastfeeding alone is not actually a good method of birth control, as one of my friends found out the hard way.
amk
I am glad that the women are pushing back even in tundra twit’s land.
Steeplejack
@kay:
Exactly. We need the premiums from all the youngsters who don’t need any health care, unless they get hit by a truck, to pay for Grandma’s end-of-life care and the people who suddenly run into, say, leukemia. Plus preventive care is always cheaper than “fixing it after the fact” care.
And it gets more expensive when you put it off. I’m a perfect example. I had a small patch of skin cancer on my forearm (basal cell carcinoma, the very best kind of skin cancer to get, if anyone’s interested) that was operated on in 2005. The dermatologist didn’t get all of it, and a few years later another spot started growing at the edge of the scar. Because I was pretty sure what it was–slow-growing basal-cell and not “get your affairs in order” melanoma–and because of the wretchedly bad health insurance I had (looking at you, Barnes & Noble!), I put off dealing with it until I would have the money for my out-of-pocket co-pay. And of course that time never came. Finally, after unexpectedly coming into a little money, I was able to get it taken care of last August. But by then it had grown to such a size (about as big as a dime) that it required Mohs surgery, which is done by a small number of specialists and is of course more expensive.
Steeplejack
Calling any front-pager! Please release me from moderation. I referred to “specialists” and forgot about the booby trap therein.
ppcli
@Steve: There isn’t a Target store in every town, for starters. If you’re in a small town in Alaska – Murkowski’s domain – you could be several hours away (along bad, treacherous in winter roads) from the nearest Target. (I posted above that I grew up in an Alaska-ish part of Canada. It’s a case in point – there was a Target store in a small city four hours west, and another one five hours south. That’s it.) It could be that for reasons of allergies or other medications this particular generic won’t work.
But in fact, if the cost of birth control is lower, it just strengthens the point that *for the insurance company, offering birth control is good business*: pregnancy and childbirth are huge costs for an insurance company. Cheap birth control that reduces unwanted pregnancies eliminates many of those costs. And of course, if Target can offer this generic at that price, a large insurance company (but not, of course, an individual consumer) can negotiate a comparable price for similar generics.
The point is that the “I don’t want to pay for your birth control” line is inherently confused or dishonest. It is the rest of us who are paying higher premiums if birth control isn’t offered. Why should the rest of us have to pay more to satisfy their disingenuous claims of “conscience”?
Edit: My post above, that I referred to in this post is in moderation.
McJulie
@kay: They like symbolic, hypothetical children only. Much like PETA, with their concern for The Animals and cavalier attitude toward actual individual animals, only with a lot more power.
kay
@Steeplejack:
I did but it hasn’t shown up yet.
Steeplejack
@kay:
It has come through now. Thanks.
liberal
@Steeplejack:
This is one of the arguments for single-payer: there’s only one pool.
Steve
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for the explanation.
@ppcli: Under the current system, prescription drug coverage and maternity coverage typically come from two different companies, so actually it’s not the no-brainer for the insurance company that you might think. Of course, it’s a no-brainer for the system as a whole but we’re not allowed to have single-payer I guess.
Steeplejack
@liberal:
I am totally down with that. I have been ranting about it for a while.
The Republic of Stupidity
If I’m not mistaken, that would a free pass to deny providing coverage ALL and ANY parts of the law… which is prolly what this whole contraceptives kerfluffle is about from day one, no?
An excuse to avoid the whole damned thing…
Is being a cheap, mean-spirited bastart sufficient moral grounds for denial of coverage?
And I’m kind of guessing, due to the severity of the backlash here, that this just might be the deciding factor in the election, and conservatives have conveniently handed Obama a 2nd term…
sharl
@catclub:
I really think you’re on to something here, that is core to the whole IGMFY “philosophy” of self-declared-but-clueless ‘Christians’. I’m not a believer myself, but I’ve met a few – very few – such folks who are a credit to their respective faiths. I wish these honorable individuals had more influence on their co-religionists. As it stands though, the “personal Jeebus” crowd has actively enabled the money-changers to not only successfully invade the temple, but to gain full access to the altar and pulpit.
WaterGirl
The idiot republicans and the catholic church are making the case for single payer much more eloquently than our side could have.
dww44
@…now I try to be amused: I agree with this. Though, I think during the Bush years I gave up on the possibility even of a moderate Republican. They just do not exist and the ones who used to be moderate have moved to tthe purity wing, protestations otherwise.
Therefore I will preach to all and sundry in this red place that voting for a Republican shouldn’t be an option for any sane and educated and rational Republican. No more believing that once elected they will go against the purists. But, sadly, they will and continue to look at me as if I had horns growing out of my head.
pseudonymous in nc
The message has been sent, Lisa: you might not be as batshit as Joe Miller, but you’ll vote the same way when Turtle Mitch says so.
Perhaps you should have learned something when 90,000 GOPers voted for Miller in the 2010 election?
Lihtox
I think it’s important to remember that to most Americans a vote is a vote, and if you vote for something that means you support it. Politically speaking, sometimes it’s good strategy to vote for something or someone you don’t approve of: to send a message, to make a quid-pro-quo deal, to eliminate your strongest rival by voting for the joke candidate in the Republican primary, etc. But it’s going to be hard to convince people that it was “just politics”, because there’s always the possibility that your strategy could blow up in your face, and we end up with President Santorum, or the Blunt Amendment becoming law.
PurpleGirl
@Warmongerer: According to my internet search Sprintec does require a prescription. It’s a generic form for Ortho-cyclen.
ThresherK
@ppcli: (In Alaska) if that pharmacist refuses to fill birth control prescriptions you may have to drive an hour or more on bad roads to find another one.
Or, the other way around: Sounds like a job for Balto, or maybe those drone planes can finally be put to use for the good of humanity.
(I don’t even know if I’m kidding anymore.)
Jay C
So, IOW, Sen. Murkowski’s apologia turns out to be something like: “I voted for the grandstanding bullshit Blunt Amendment even though I thought it was just grandstanding bullshit, and now I’m sorry, ‘cuz you’re all mad at me for not noticing Senate legislation might have real-world consequences” ?
A real Profile In Courage there, Lisa:
NCSteve
Who could have foreseen that women would read a vote against contraception coverage for women as a vote against contraception coverage for women? I mean, they screamed “FREEEDUMM! WOLVERINES!” while they were voting and everything, and yet these silly empty-headed broads somehow interpreted her vote against contraception coverage for women as a vote against contraception coverage for women.
Sigh. I don’t know what’s happening to this country.
kay
@Lihtox:
I agree with that, and she certainly knows it, but her explanation is just doubly lame, because once you stand on a grave threat to religious liberty (which is what she was claiming) you cannot then say “but, when I think about it, birth control matters more”.
She claimed religious liberty was under attack. They were using this ridiculous, over the top language. There’s no backing off that ledge, and into wonkiness on policy and touchy feely stuff about her “supporters”.
Was religious liberty threatened, or not? If not, why did she say it was? It’s one thing to vote as “messaging”. It’s another thing entirely to start screeching insanely about the bill of rights and not mean a word of it.
Why believe anything she says? She’ll say anything.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne:
To further comment on generics (and not being snarky to Mnemosyne). This pertains to all drugs, not just birth control pills. Generics use somewhat different component chemicals in their recipes. Some of those chemicals differ significantly in their effects in the body and the effectiveness of the compound.
My former boss, for example, had to use a very expensive heart drug and the insurance company wanted her to use a generic. But she and her doctor had tried the (much) cheaper generic and found it didn’t work for her. She and the insurance company fought over the issue for some time before they agreed to cover it but her co-pay was still a few hundred dollars a month so she could have the named drug.
Mike G
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Even a ‘resonable’ R is still going to toe the ugly party line most of the time.
I haven’t heard a more mealy-mouthed explanation since…yesterday, when Eric Hodler was explaining why he can kill anybody any time for secret reasons.
kay
@Lihtox:
That’s what kills me about conservatives. It’s why they can’t back down. They invent these huge moral and constitutional conundrums, because they can’t just get down in the weeds with the rest of us and talk about their (crack-pot) views on health insurance. They’re too lofty and grandiose for that. It’s always “liberty!” or “freedom!”
Once you’ve said that, once you’ve said “religious LIBERTY is at STAKE!” there’s no going back to health insurance regulations.
It’s the boy who cried wolf, for me. I wouldn’t believe them if they were sincere. One can only pull out the “liberty!” card so many times.
Mnemosyne
@PurpleGirl:
Yep. They’ve discovered that there’s something about the formulation of generic buproprion (Wellbutrin) that makes it not work nearly as well as the brand name. That was kind of a pain in the ass to get covered while I was one it, but at least my doctor was able to point to actual studies in the medical journals that showed the same thing.
It happens even with OTC drugs — I noticed that they put something in the generic version of Zyrtec that gives me insomnia, but I don’t have that problem with the name brand. So I end up having to buy the name brand, for $10 to $15 more. Grr.
Mike G
Nothing says “freedom” in rightard-world like your boss restricting your health coverage based on his/her personal views.
Origuy
By comparison, the cost for V–g-a at Costco is $226 for 10 100mg pills. The dosage Rush got caught with was 100mg; I think most people buy them and cut them up as lower dosages cost the same amount. C–l-s and L-v-t-a are comparable. I know that my insurance covers it at the highest co-pay level, at least $60 for 10. Given my social life, 10 pills would last me a long time.
latts
@Mnemosyne:
Yasmin has spironolactone (aka Aldactone, or possibly a closely-related compound) in it, which is a diuretic prescribed for hypertension, and it’s used off-label for hormonal acne because it acts as an androgen blocker. Diuretics can cause potassium overload. Being acne-prone, I was asked if I wanted to try Yasmin, but IIRC it also creates a higher risk of blood clots, which is already a moderate concern for us over-35s.
Just FTR, I went through several prescriptions in the past few years, including ones that had worked fine for me in the past, and encountered various side effects with all of them before deciding to do without. But it’s a huge hassle even with insurance (my copay was $50 for 4 wks on some types- $650 annually) because you’re supposed to give each brand 3 months or more for your body to adjust before determining whether it was suitable.
brantl
@Mnemosyne:Why tell the morons? Let them have an aneurysm over something that they could find with a Google shopping search! BONUS!
Ruckus
@azlib:
I guess contraception has replaced Social Security as the 3rd rail of American politics
Great call.
They probably wanted an issue that would not piss off the biggest portion of their base, so they jumped on this. Problem is that it pisses off the majority of everyone else. And some of their base.
Mnemosyne
@latts:
That’s what it was! I knew potassium was involved somehow, but I couldn’t remember the details and Google failed me.
I ended up on Mircette because the only side effect was a once-monthly migraine that I could ward off if I took Excedrin ahead of time, so that’s the one I ended up on. Everything else was much worse.
Katie
So I guess I have a different take on Murkowski than most of you. I’m really pleased that she changed her mind and that she’d vote differently if she got a do over. Most republican types *never* change their mind, they just vote as a block.
Lisa said she’d change her vote based on what her constituents told her after she voted for the Blunt thing. That sounds to me like she listened to what they had to say and is adjusting her position accordingly. Isn’t that what they are supposed to do? Take her constituents desires into account? I don’t think I could hold it against any politician that changes their position based on constituent feedback–even if they are right wing wackjobs.